A lot has happened in the life of Lydia Lassila since winning gold in Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010.
The four time Olympian gave birth to her son Kai in May 2011, returned to training in 2012 and competition in the 2012/2013 season where she scored three second place podiums at World Cup level.
She came into Sochi ranked number four in the world after winning a gold and a silver in the pre Olympic World Cup season and she psyched out the competition by landing a quad twisting triple in training. The first time a female has landed this in aerial history.
Not that Channel Ten the official Olympic broadcaster in Australia reported it, instead they focused on her crashes in training and left it to Andrew Webster at the Sydney Morning Herald to break this world first news for female aerialists. Let’s just say Lydia was not happy and said so herself. Like Torah Bright, the world could learn a lot from ‘our Lydia’.
Come Valentines Day in Sochi Lassila went in a firm favourite for a podium place in the women’s aerials. But she had to survive same day training where she did a knee injury prior to the actual competition and then four knock out rounds before making the four skier final.
The mere difficulty of completing a quad twisting triple mid air was enough to get her a third place and a bronze medal despite not quite landing the jump perfectly. Put simply, she went big on a jump that she had first set her eyes on in 1999. For Lassila, it was go hard or go home.
She went hard and is now going home with a bronze in her back pocket.
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Alisa Camplin’s commentary was, I’m sorry to say, pathetic. “I hope she’s not too upset” etc etc – and the male commentator said that he hoped she wouldn’t be too disappointed when went to bed that night”
Similarly tonight, they played a clip from Greta Small’s interview where she talked about being annoyed she missed the turn… but chose to cut it off before she went on to say that that was downhill racing for you and you win some you lose some … Greta’s attitude was awesome and shame on Ten for cutting that to emphasise their agenda.
Admittedly though, I’ve been generally impressed with 10’s coverage and it’s heaps better than 9 were for London and Vancouver.